(MASS TORT NEXUS MEDIA) Plaintiffs have asked U.S. District Court Judge Ed Kinkeade, Northern District of Texas, who’s hearing thousands of hip implant lawsuits in the DePuy Orthopaedics’ Pinnacle Hip MDL 2244, to remand their cases to the original court of filing for individual trial dates.

According to the February 5th motion filed with the U.S. District Court, plaintiffs request the Court begin an “orderly and efficient staggered remand process,” where both plaintiffs and defense would select 10 cases each for remand to federal courts in California, New York and Texas, for a total of 60 cases being set for trial starting in 2019.

There were further requests that the Court begin not only the remand process, but start phased MDL discovery as well in peripherally related cases alleging RICO, qui tam and other non-personal injuries as part of the metal-on-poly hip revision lawsuits currently pending in the multidistrict litigation.

DePuy Pinnacle Implants and Metallosis

DePuy Orthopaedics, a subsidiary of Johnson & Johnson, have been named in more than 9,500 hip replacement lawsuits involving the metal-on-metal Pinnacle hip system, which utilizes the Ultamet liner, pending in the multidistrict litigation (see DEPUY MDL 2244 Pinnacle Hip Implant Briefcase) currently underway in the Northern District of Texas.

Plaintiffs allege that the metal-on-metal design within the Ultamet liner configuration can cause dangerous amounts of toxic metal debris to be released into the joint surround the hip, and into the blood stream resulting in metallosis, causing adverse local tissue reactions, pseudotumor formation, and other complications that necessitate the need for revision surgery to replace the DePuy hip implant components.

DePuy/J&J Loses Bellwether Trials

So far, the Pinnacle hip MDL 2244 litigation has convened four bellwether trials related to the metal-on-metal implants with the trial in October 2014, ending with a verdict for DePuy and Johnson & Johnson, which to date, is the only defense win in this litigation.

In the second trial, plaintiffs were awarded a verdict of $500 million in March 2016, however, Judge Kinkeade ultimately reduced the award to $151 million, based on Texas statutes that limit punitive damages. The third bellwether trial ending in December 2016, resulted in a massive billion dollar verdict, when six Pinnacle recipients who were residents of California were awarded more than $1 billion, with 90 percent of the verdict being punitive in nature, meant to send a clear message to the defendants. California does not have a limit on punitive damages, but the judge reduced the award to $543 million, based on the US Supreme Court ruling limiting excessive punitive damages. The most recent trial resulted in the plaintiff being awarded $247 million in November 2017.

J&J Wants To Avoid More Massive Verdicts

J&J are simply using every legal tool available to them, in an attempt to avoid another massive jury verdict like the one in the December 2016 Pinnacle Hip trial, where California plaintiffs were awarded $1 billion in punitive damages, which the court subsequently reduced to $500 million on appeal. DePuy and J&J want to restrict plaintiffs in any way they can, as J&J is facing massive verdicts in other ongoing federal and state court cases related to its various medical device and pharmaceutical product lines.

DePuy Metal-on-Metal Hip Implant Issues

In January 2013, the U.S. Food & Drug Administration warned that metal-on-metal hip replacements were associated with higher rates of early failure compared to those constructed from other materials. Last year, the FDA finalized a new regulation requiring the manufacturers of two types of metal-on-metal hips to submit a premarket approval (PMA) application if they wanted to continue marketing their current devices and/or market a new implant.

In August 2010, DePuy Orthopaedics announced a recall of its ASR metal-on-metal hip replacement system, after data indicated the hips were associated with a higher-than-expected rate of premature failure. Plaintiffs who have filed Pinnacle hip lawsuits question why the company has not taken similar action in regards to the Pinnacle/Ultamet liner combination.

In May 2013, DePuy Orthopaedics did announce that it would phase out metal-on-metal hip implants, including the Pinnacle hip system. The New York Times stated that the company cited slowing sales, as well as the FDA’s changing regulatory stance on all-metal hip implants, as factors in its decision.

Artificial hips are designed to last for 15 years in the best of situations, often that is not the case with many implants failing after just 10 years, and in the case of design defects such as those alleged in Pinnacle devices and many other hip implants, onset of metallosis and other adverse conditions resulting, as well as the ever present implant mechanical breakdown, which cause life altering health problems for patients.

FDA Issues Pinnacle Warning

The U.S. Food & Drug Administration issued a warning in January 2013, stating that patients receiving metal-on-metal hip replacements were more likely to experience premature device failure compared to those who received other types of implants.

In November 2013, DePuy Orthopaedics announced a $2.5 billion settlement in the DePuy ASR Hip Impant MDL2197 ( MDL 2197 DePuy Orthopaedics, Inc. ASR Hip Implant Briefcase), related to the ASR line of metal-on-metal hip implant components. DePuy ended sales of the all-metal Pinnacle hip system that same year, purportedly due to “low clinician use”. However, the company has so far declined to settle the Pinnacle hip litigation.

J&J Facing Many Legal Hurdles

Johnson & Johnson has been hit with numerous large jury verdicts across all areas of the J&J pharmaceutical and medical device operations, with plaintiff trial verdicts Risperdal, Ethicon TVM, Talcum Powder, Xarelto and other products, where recent combined trial verdicts have easily exceeded an additional $200 million. J&J and it’s subsidiaries are now facing more than 100 thousand lawsuits over it’s drug and medical device product lines, in both federal and state courts across the country. To complicate matters further for J&J, the recently started Opiate Prescription MDL 2804 (MDL 2804 Re: NATIONAL PRESCRIPTION OPIATE LITIGATION MDL 2804 Briefcase) names Johnson & Johnson as a defendant in suits filed by more than 400 cities, counties and states across the country.

They Have Opioid MDL Issues Too

Perhaps J&J should look at settling some of the cases they’ve defended so aggressively over the last 5 years, such as the Pinnacle MDL 2244 to prepare for the Opioid Crisis litigation, which is now looking to displace Tobacco Litigation as far as size and scope as well as the massive multi-billion dollar settlements and years of ongoing litigation that came from lawsuits filed initially by governmental entities.

US District Judge Catherine C. Blake in the District of Maryland will hear 28 actions pending in 19 districts, plus 11 related actions pending in 11 other district courts.

These actions involve products liability claims relating to components of the Birmingham Hip Resurfacing (BHR) system, the R3 acetabular system, or some combination of a BHR component and other hip implant components.

Cobalt-chromium alloy

Smith & Nephew has faced litigation involving its hip implants since 2010. There are 34 BHR actions (including the potential tagalong actions) pending in 25 district courtrs across the country. Most of these actions were filed only recently and are in their infancy.

The lawsuits share factual questions concerning the design, manufacture, marketing or performance of Smith & Nephew’s BHR system. Specifically, the plaintiffs focus on complications arising from the use of a cobalt-chromium alloy in the manufacture of the BHR components. The plaintiffs allege that they have suffered pain, adverse local tissue reaction, pseudotumors, bone and tissue necrosis, metallosis, or other symptoms, often necessitating revision surgery.

Smith & Nephew opposed the centralization of the cases. The company also argued that the primary dispute in the BHR actions is whether plaintiffs’ claims are preempted by federal law. It contended that the individual issues involved in determining whether a parallel state law claim exists and has been pled in each action would overwhelm the questions common to the preemption analysis.

“We suspect that the preemption analysis will be more similar from case to case than Smith & Nephew suggests. The same preemption analysis will be conducted in each action, and state tort laws that share similar elements can be grouped together for analysis. To the extent these actions survive Smith & Nephew’s preemption challenges, discovery is likely to be complex, expert-intensive, and will benefit from centralization,” the JPMDL said.

Judge Blake is already presiding over two Smith & Nephew hip lawsuits. The JPMDL said she “is an experienced MDL judge with the willingness and ability to manage this litigation efficiently. She is well situated to structure this litigation so as to minimize delay and avoid unnecessary duplication of discovery and motion practice.”

Based in Memphis, TN, Smith & Nephew has sold the Modular SMF and REDAPT implants for almost a decade. In its letter to doctors, the company admitted that “Smith & Nephew considers that patients implanted with the modular neck hip prostheses may be at greater risk of revision surgery than with comparable monolithic products.”